Admitting Office Websites

MyEIU will serve as your personal portal into EIU, allowing you to learn anything you could possibly want to know about our campus. Your portal will plug you into the university's latest news, events, and opportunities to visit, along with links to information matching your unique interests. Let's get started! Go ahead and sign up now.

Contact Us

Jad Smith

Professor of English

Office Hours: TR 2:00-3:00; F 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Jad Smith is a Professor of British Literature and Cultural Studies and a member of the Women's Studies faculty. He teaches graduate seminars titled Enlightenment Sexualities, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama in Performance, and Science Fiction Vanguards: New Wave and Cyberpunk, as well as a wide range of undergraduate courses.

"John Brunner proves to be an excellent model for what later volumes in the series might look like – clearly and accessibly written, free of theoretical or historical hobbyhorses, and meticulously researched. . . . Smith paints a fascinating portrait of the rapidly changing world of Anglo-American SF of the 1950s through the 1980s, and of the significant role that Brunner played as a kind of bridge between SF traditions."
- Gary K. Wolfe, Locus Magazine

"Smith’s analyses caused me to hunt out stories I have (in the yellowing and fragile pages of the Nova magazines) in order to read them at last: fine and often ground-breaking work that really does seem to have been all but forgotten for decades....It is to be hoped that this book succeeds in its aim of establishing John Brunner in his rightful place as one of the truly important modern writers of fantastic fiction."

- John Howard, Wormwood 20

"Smith writes in an engaging style, unstintingly chronicling the vicissitudes of the man’s life as well as rightfully hailing his triumphs. . . . As a general conclusion, if this is the calibre of entries in this series, then there is much to look forward to."

- Simon Marshall-Jones, The Spectral Press

"Though coming from a university press -- it forms part of the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series from the University of Illinois Press -- this book isn't steeped in literary criticism or swamped in jargon; general readers interested in the subject will find it perfectly accessible. . . . This book left me keen to read more Brunner, and also to read further titles in the Modern Masters range."

- Stephen Theaker, interzone

"The comparative neglect of the late John Brunner probably derives from the fact that he does not fit comfortably into any of the standard models of discourse within science-fiction criticism; one of the strengths of Jad Smith’s work is that it addresses this. . . . He also pays appropriate amounts of attention to Brunner’s exploration of other genres – fantasy, horror, and crime – and his non-genre work." - Roz Kaveney, Times Literary Supplement

"Based on extensive research and filled with thoughtful commentary and insights, Jad Smith's book will stand alone as the one essential resource on John Brunner, an important science fiction writer who merits much more attention than he has so far received."
- Gary Westfahl, author of Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction

"Smith gives an insightful, succinct account of a tireless writer disparaged from both ends during his peak years—the ‘60s and ‘70s—as too literary and too pulpy. Smith’s biography shows how Brunner balanced craft and conscience in stories at once page turning and complex."

"The University of Illinois is publishing a series of monographs called Modern Masters of Science Fiction. They've started with an excellent, and all too forgotten, one: John Brunner. Jad Smith has given him a thorough and perceptive treatment. Highly recommended." - Arthur D. Hlavaty, editor of Nice Distinctions

"If you have any interest in science fiction and have read John Brunner, then I see this as an essential read."

- Stephen C. Ormsby, author of Long Lost Song

"I recommend this book to anyone who is an admirer of John Brunner or is a fan of science fiction history."